Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

Upworthy is a media marketing company that repackages “meaningful” content from around the web in order to make it more popular on social media.

Upworthy’s launch was funded by Chris Hughes, formerly of Facebook, current owner of The New Republic. They later announced that they had been afforded $4 million from angel funders. In 2013, it announced an $8 million round of funding and plans to double its staff — by 2014, it had a staff of 50 — and expand into new verticals. Later that year, it announced the launch of a global health and poverty section funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its primary initial source of earned revenue was by charging nonprofits for directing potential donors toward them. Long term, however, Upworthy plans to be funded entirely by ad revenue, and is pursuing sponsored content deals with a variety of brands. It launched its first native advertising campaign in 2014 and later that year reported that its native advertising was far outpacing its editorial content in traffic, attention, and shares.

The viral popularity of the content Upworthy aggregates and repackages can be compared to BuzzFeed‘s popularity and growth, but with an added mission for social justice. Causes that Upworthy has attempted to promote include gay rights, cancer research, veteran’s issues and education. Like BuzzFeed, Upworthy has been criticized for formulaic headlines in an attempt to manufacture viral content, as well as its heavy relianceon Facebook for traffic, though it has also been praised for its viral success.

In 2014, Upworthy publicly released to code to track its internally developed audience engagement metric, attention minutes.

The Houston Chronicle is a daily newspaper owned by Hearst Corp. It is the second-largest newspaper in Texas and 13th-largest in the U.S., with 370,961 in combined print and online daily circulation as of 2014. The Chronicle’s online operation has been praised for its innovation. A 2006 study conducted by NYU professor Jay Rosen named…

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